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New Theories / Jano's relativity denials
« on: 07/05/2024 12:46:42 »
This is from Susskind's book
Apparently Einstein was troubled with similar thoughts.
If we believe the book then Einstein screwed up his conclusion compared to what is proposed here, right?
Quote
The Principle of Relativity was first formulated about 250 years before Einstein was born. So why is Einstein so famous? It's because he revealed the apparent conflict between the Principle of Relativity and another principle of physics - a principle that we might call Maxwell's Principle. As discussed in chapters 2 and 4, James Clerk Maxwell discovered the modern theory of electromagnetism - the theory of all electric and magnetic forces in nature. Maxwell's greatest discovery was unraveling the great mystery of light. Light, he argued, consists of waves of electrical and magnetic disturbances moving through space like waves through the sea. But for us the most important thing that Maxwell proved is that light moving through empty space always moves at exactly the same speed: approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. That's what I call Maxwell's Principle:
Light moving through empty space, no matter how it was created, always moves at the same velocity.
But now we have a problem: a serious clash between two principles. Einstein was not the first to worry about the clash between the Principle of Relativity and Maxwell's Principle, but he saw the problem most clearly. And whereas others were troubled by experimental data, Einstein - master of thought experiments - was troubled by an experiment that took place entirely within his head. According to his own recollection, in 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein produced the following paradox. Picturing himself riding in a railroad carriage moving with the speed of light, he observes a light wave moving alongside him in the same direction. Would he not see the light ray standing still? There were no helicopters in Einstein's day, but we might imagine him hovering above the sea, moving with exactly the speed of ocean waves. The waves would appear to be standing still. In the same way, the sixteen-year-old reasoned that the passenger in the railway carriage (remember, he is moving with the speed of light) would detect a completely motionless light wave. Somehow, at that early age, Einstein knew enough about Maxwell's theory to realize that what he was imagining was impossible: Maxwell's Principle asserted that all light moves with the same velocity. If the laws of nature are the same in all reference frames, then Maxwell's Principle had better apply in the moving train. Maxwell's Principle and the Principle of Relativity of Galileo and Newton were on a collision course.
Susskind, Leonard. The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (pp. 205-206). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
Apparently Einstein was troubled with similar thoughts.
If we believe the book then Einstein screwed up his conclusion compared to what is proposed here, right?